State of the Culture: Re-education Camp

The words “re-education camp” should send a chill down your spine. Even more so, because it’s becoming a reality in our new moral regime. From The Resurgent:

We have already seen how Jack Phillips Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado has been made to care by this wildfire burning through our culture. The details of the case are chilling. For years Phillips served both gay and straight customers equally. But when a gay couple insisted that Phillips bake a custom wedding cake for them in 2012, he declined.

According to an administrative law judge who reviewed the case, “Phillips believes that decorating cakes is a form of art, that he can honor God through his artistic talents, and that he would displease God by creating cakes for same-sex marriages.”

And get this: Phillips offered to sell the couple a cake he had already made that they could then customize as they desired. They refused, insisting that he be made to decorate it for them.

Phillips made his faith priorities clear: “I’m a man who is devoted to following Jesus Christ. He’s the one that’s in charge of all this…. It’s not up to the courts to decide what marriage is. It’s up to God to decide that. If we are living in obedience to Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Bible we are on the right side of history—no matter what they say.”

On August 13, 2015, a Colorado State Court of Appeals ruled Phillips must make cakes for gay weddings if he is to make any cakes at all.

His attorney Jeremy Tedesco said, “Government has a duty to protect people’s freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally rather than force them to adopt the government’s views.”

Some have cried discrimination, claiming that Phillips is a hater who refused service to homosexuals. But that is not what happened. He was happy to sell the gay couple a cake that he had made—but that was not enough. They insisted that give his seal of approval to their ceremony by using his baking artistry to create and decorate a customized cake that would celebrate their relationship. They insisted that he violate his conscience. And the government agreed.

To add insult to injury, the court ordered that his entire staff undergo training in the state’s policies—including his eighty-eight-year-old mother.

Re-education camp for bakers has come to America.

Think about that for a minute. An 88-year-old mother, forced to sit through training that explains to her why the beliefs she has held her entire life are wrong, and why she must participate in a ceremony she believes is immoral. If that isn’t a wakeup call, I don’t know what is.

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One of the left’s predominant narratives in the bathroom wars is that there is no way laws permitting men who believe they are women relieve themselves in the women’s bathroom will result in predatory behavior. It’s sort of bizarre, actually: members of the LBTQ-alphabet-soup community have attained such an exalted status that apparently we are to believe that members of that community are without sin and will not misbehave in any circumstances. This, as with most of their claims, is nonsense. From The Daily Wire:

Here are 5 times “transgender” men abused women and children by exploiting such facilities:

A Seattle man, citing transgender bathrooms laws, was able to gain access to a women’s locker-room at a public recreational center while little girls were changing for swim practice.

In February, The Daily Wire reported that a Seattle man who walked into the women’s locker-room—on two occasions—and began undressing, cited the “new state rule that allows people to choose a bathroom based on gender identity.” You know, those laws the ingenious left has been pushing because of “inclusiveness.”

“It was a busy time at Evans Pool around 5:30 p.m. Monday February 8,” reports KING5 News. “The pool was open for lap swim. According to Seattle Parks and Recreation, a man wearing board shorts entered the women’s locker room and took off his shirt. Women alerted staff, who told the man to leave, but he said ‘the law has changed and I have a right to be here.’”

Subsequent to this new rule, no one called the police on this man who reportedly came back a second time when young girls were changing into their swimsuits for swim practice.

A Toronto man claiming to be transgender was arrested and sentenced to jail for sexually assaulting several women in a women’s shelter after he gained access to the shelter and its shower facilitates as “Jessica.”

As Life Site notes, “A biological man claiming to be ‘transgender’ so as to gain access to and prey on women at two Toronto shelters was jailed ‘indefinitely’” in early March.

Christopher Hambrook, 37, using the name “Jessica,” was able to gain access to Toronto women’s shelters.

“Her tights had been pulled down past her bottom and her bathing suit had been pulled to the side,” reads a court document of one of the incidents. “She yelled at the accused, demanding to know what he was doing. He simply covered his face with his hands, said ‘Oops!’ and started giggling.”

Per Life Site:

Court also heard evidence of Hambrook terrorizing a deaf woman living in the shelter. “The accused grabbed the complainant’s hand and forcibly placed it on his crotch area while his penis was erect,” court heard.

The same deaf women reported that Hambrook would peer at her through a gap between the door and its frame while she showered.

A Virginia man was caught and arrested for peeping on and filming two women and a 5-year-old child in a women’s restroom after receiving entry by dressing in drag.

“Richard Rodriguez, 30, filmed a woman in a bathroom stall at the Potomac Mills Mall, Prince William County Police said,” reported NBC Washington. His victim was a 35-year-old woman who was in a bathroom stall when “she saw a bag moved toward her under the stall divider.” According to police, Rodriguez had been filming her.

Apparently, when the victim rushed out of the stall to confront the man, he had already moved to another woman just one stall over. “The victim alerted the woman and then contacted mall security of the shopping center on 2700 block of Potomac Mills Circle in Woodbridge, Virginia,” noted NBC Washington.

Reports suspect that this was not Rodriguez’s first time peeping on women by dressing himself up as woman to enter a restroom; disturbingly, he likely spied on a 53-year-old woman in May of 2015 and a 35-year-old and her 5-year-old daughter back in October.

“Rodriguez, of Fredericksburg, was charged with three counts of unlawful filming of a non-consenting person and three counts of peeping,” reported NBC Washington.

As The Daily Wire reported in late March, charges were filed against Jason Pomare, 33, for allegedly disguising himself as a woman, sneaking in to the women’s restroom at a Macy’s department store and secretly videotaping hours of footage of women in bathroom stalls.

Pomare reportedly disguised himself with a wig and fake breasts; he kept his video camera with him in a small purse.

The suspect “was charged Tuesday with six counts of unlawful use of a concealed camera for purposes of sexual gratification. After his arrest, investigators said a video camera found in his purse had ‘hours’ of video of women using the restroom inside the store,” reports NBC4 News.

Two male students were caught at the University of Toronto exploiting “gender-neutral” facilities to peep on women in the shower with their cellphone cameras.

As The Daily Wire’s Pardes Seleh reported in October, The University of Toronto had to change their gender-neutral bathrooms back to bathrooms separated based on biology “after two separate incidents of ‘voyeurism’ were reported on campus September 15 and 19. Male students within the University’s Whitney Hall student residence were caught holding their cellphones over female students’ shower stalls and filming them as they showered.”

If that’s not enough for you, by the way, Breitbart published a list of 25 incidents that are equally concerning. If we want to make liberals nervous, perhaps we should just inform them that allowing men into women’s bathrooms enhances rape culture.

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Considering the Republican nomination of Donald Trump—barring some miracle in Cleveland in July—I think I’ll end this update with a summary from John Kirkwood over at The Daily Clash:

Remember when America was more Mayberry than Babylon, more Norman Rockwell than Robert Mapplethorpe? Remember what it was like to wake up and not think that your own government was the biggest threat to your freedom and your future? Remember what it was like to just plan for the day and dream of the weekend? – To raise a family, to go to church, play a little softball, have a round with the boys or work in the garden?

When you took your son to Boy Scouts or your daughter to Brownies and never worried that in the doing, they’d be exposed to sodomy or tutored by Planned Parenthood? When you dropped them off at school and your only worry was their grade point average or the kind of friend’s that they would choose? Oh sure, you may have worried about your son’s friends promoting gambling or marijuana; you may have been concerned that your daughter would be pressured to “put out” by the captain of the football team, but now, the state does all that.

Though some may be, most Americans are not apathetic leeches that seek the destruction of all that is good. Most Americans just want to raise a family, coach a little league team, help at AWANA, or maybe work a second job to pay for Junior’s college tuition. We want the harvest that freedom provides apart from the toil of laboring and nurturing in its fields. We did not make the time to prune the tree of Liberty or weed freedom’s garden and it didn’t take long for the weeds to set up camp. The problem is that liberals, like weeds, don’t take a sabbatical. And now, we’re over-run.

“I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, natural history and naval architecture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry, and porcelain.” — John Adams

I used to love this quote and the beautiful expression of sacrifice for children and grandchildren; but when you hold it up to the light you find out that a generation that avoids the study of war for painting, poetry, music, etc. is not worthy to pass freedom on to their children and grandchildren.

Adams, as a vital part of the “greatest generation” of Americans, would be grieved to have seen the consequence of his daydream – the 1960’s. Those of the “worst generation,” knew much of music and poetry and very little of true liberty. The “Me” generation and their residue are living proof that we don’t do posterity a solid by depriving them of any of life’s lessons; especially the experience that “eternal vigilance” really is the price of liberty.

The nightmare that culminated in the worst generation isn’t over. The spoiled brats have taken the wheel and run the institutions that are running our country into the ash heap of history. The lesson they never learned is that military victory is the price of freedom and no generation should be deprived of its consideration.

If John Adams’ sacrificial statement is truly noble; then who am I as a father or a grandfather to deprive my offspring of such nobility?

A generation that never learns accountability and sacrifice will not value their inheritance. Like the immigrant that comes to our shores with nothing, lives frugal, works hard and builds an empire only to see it squandered by trust-fund brats who never learn their father’s work ethic. Dad, who wants to spare his children the toil of the calloused hand, unknowingly deprives them of the opportunity to build character and integrity. A generation of Hiltons and Kardashians will not guide, protect and pass on liberty and prosperity, lest venereal warts and a tab from Juicy Couture are counted as a suitable foundation for the future.

I think Adams outgrew the pampered youth sentimentality because he seems to contradict it with, “Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”

So that’s this week. With the choice of Trump or Hillary for President of the United States—would you care to be shot or poisoned, sir?—it seems that political hopes, for the time being, are dead. At least Hillary won’t have to measure up the White House windows for curtains. She probably still has the ones she took with her last time around.